Lovi Lovi: Page Two

Magic Shop // St Augustine

Expatriate, you, with notebook pages

wrapping crowded market streets in sketch,

with stones pocketed from the naked waters

of your mother’s country, with chiseled obsidian

from sacrificial altars stretching through millennia,

I would enshroud you in robes of chilly mountain fog

embroidered with the guiding star

from the gold of your sprawling ruins,

the crumbled stones of legacy carved

into your very limbs.

You are a glyph, a message from the ancients,

the bard in sheep’s clothing; a preening parrot

preaching of a primal fear and loathing,

the quiet denial of modern comforts

in exchange for banners of the old guard.

She cries back out for you,

her clutching grasp empty

as you throw yourself, exhausted,

back on the shores of an adopted home,

And she’ll have you back or condemn you

to a life of plaster brick facades,

left only with fading dreams of rhythmic chaos

and a chicken’s heart plucked live

from unflinching claws of magic.

The mountainside breathes its whispers

of spells over adventurous wanderers

and such hearts will never quite be home,

never settled, ready for the inevitable next chapter

of the bound-to-roam.

Every face should be a laughing girl

running after donkey-drawn carts,

every set of arms laden with rambutan

and durian’s enduring potency.

These arms and faces lack- the tequila brings them back.

The tequila brings it back,

the silent thundering of tar-black village night,

pounding blood in ears and numbing lips.

Tequila brings back big cats.

It is you who is the jaguar,

not these cartoon muscle groups in packs

of teal and black running on a line through all their yards.

These cushy blobs of strength know nothing

of breath flavored with lovi lovi and liquor -

they sleep in the sheets of protected royalty

while the jaguar scales branches.

Curl around forgotten monoliths,

sleep free. No predator but Time

or his mistress Misfortune

could rouse a lounging beast-

he does what he wants, his only plea

(more a languorous desiring): to find a spot

specialized for camouflaging the shine

of rippling dots so as to allow recline;

a vantage point to observe the restive milling

of the rest of us, spilling back and forth

to the amusement of twitching whiskers.